When health makes you quit a job

A long-winded RIP to the careers that could’ve been.

Credit: mk.s on Unsplash

Welcome to Solicited Advice, our weekly column that celebrates the helpfulness in health. Because in a world where strangers at the grocery store love to tell you that a specific brand of magnesium will indeed “cure” what ails you (it probably won’t, so sorry), we’re all about passing on our lived experience in a way that makes your life a little better. Are we experts? Nah, not really. But we’re great listeners who have perfected the art of pillow screaming. Let’s get into it!

I recently had to leave my career field because my health couldn’t handle the demands on my time and energy. But I loved it so much, and I feel like I’m grieving. Have you all ever had to deal with leaving a job because of your health?

Ash: At the end of my penultimate semester in college, I had to get my thyroid yeeted due to cancer. Those first few years post-surgery was an absolute rollercoaster — at one point I was sleeping 16+ hours a day — and I realized fatigue was going to play a significant role in my life moving forward. I was about to graduate with a plan to work on professional film sets, and the realization sunk in that my body would not allow me to do this. Unless I got really lucky, I couldn’t expect to work on sets run by unions with strict hours, or even on smaller productions because they’d still have too long of days and not enough breaks. As an early 20-something who had pursued film throughout college with a body in fairly good shape, this wouldn’t have been a problem had I been able to keep that organ. But not only was I on an emotional ride with what my physical body was experiencing, I was simultaneously realizing just how many facets of my reality were changing at once, and that was — and can be — so devastating. We want life changes to come out of a place of empowerment, but in reality life doesn’t always work out that way. 

This reckoning fundamentally changed me as a person. It showed me that change itself is constant and there is no option to fight life, you just have to find the path forward. It will likely take creativity to see if there’s a way your career aspirations can be included in your life so you can spend time doing what you love — and there may not be — and some days may suck harder than others. I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying that grief is so real, and those feelings of grief make sense as there is true loss happening in your world. I’m passing along a reminder to take all the time you can to enjoy what is good in your life at this moment as you continue to navigate the (un)expected changes you’re experiencing.

Jess: I went to college with a specific career in mind — while I was already chronically ill, the confidence and naïveté of youth meant I hadn’t really considered how chronic illnesses often get worse with age, and so I hadn’t considered whether I would have a long-term future in that field — and when the recruitment came my senior year, it was just a few short months after my cancer diagnosis. I didn’t move forward with it because — among other reasons — I knew I wasn’t physically, mentally, and emotionally ready to take on what would have been extensive, intensive training. Instead, I went into news journalism, which I loved (and hated in sometimes equal measure). 

After about a decade in the demanding (and wildly underpaid and often abusive) world that is local news, my health required me to make changes. And while I probably could have pushed it another 3-5 years with some smaller changes, the station hired a new department head who was not only unqualified and incompetent, he was also a grade-A jerk. His behavior — including refusing our contractually-obligated cost of living raises because he “didn’t know us well enough yet,” calling me while I was on PTO to tell me I needed to come in and work someone else’s shift because he didn’t want to ask “one of the guys” do it, and telling us to focus our digital attention on pretty slideshows instead of actual news stories because “ad clicks” — was the final straw. 

After that, I continued teaching journalism students for a few years while also building my own business, but ultimately my life pretty much skidded to a halt in 2020 with long COVID exacerbating my existing conditions. Not just my working experience, but hobbies too. I couldn’t walk up the three steps to our front door anymore without being out of breath and getting dizzy and shaky, never mind doing a full workout. Taking the dogs out for walks? Had to work up to it, time it just right, and take a lot of breaks. Baking? Too much vertical time, even with a stool or chair. It felt like my entire life was out of my reach, and I’m still grieving parts of me I’ve lost to chronic illness over the years. I’m not where I was before COVID, and I may never be there again. I’ll never know who I could have been if not for the constellation of conditions I live with. And thankfully, I’ve found some peace with that. One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that trying to ignore the grief and “what ifs” is a quick path to bitterness and self-recrimination, whereas allowing myself to feel the grief and play with the “what ifs” actually allows me to be more at-ease in the present. Which I guess is a long-winded way of saying there may be something to that whole “feel your feelings” stuff.

Kat: I’m one of those rare birds who got a college degree with a singular career focus in mind — becoming a lifestyle magazine editor — and actually landed a job in the field straight out of college. Despite the dismal pay and extremely long hours, being a magazine editor in Manhattan felt like every dream I ever had came true. I was doing it. I made it. I was willing and ready to climb up from the ranks on the masthead. But there’s a ton you don’t see in the movies: the never-ending deadlines, the late-night press events, using my precious weekends to transcribe interviews, cold calling venues, coordinating photo shoots, and interviewing interns. I, unfortunately, lasted less than two years on the job and ultimately needed to relocate back to Michigan because of my health. So I guess that was a really long-winded way of saying: I see you, I’ve been you, and it royally sucks.

Since I’m about 15+ years removed from that change, I’ve had oodles of time to really dissect how I’ve tried to make diamonds out of chronic illness coal. My biggest piece of advice would be to take a critical yet creative eye to your skillset. Which skills could you repurpose for a different field, company, or specific job that matches where you’re really at physically or mentally? I don’t think my heart will ever let hard skills like copyediting/copywriting or developmental editing disappear. So I’ve taken those base abilities and applied them to fields outside magazine editorial, primarily in tech. And all of those interviews I used to conduct? Running an online community has a lot of the same threads — talking to people and getting them to share their stories. At the end of the day, I just want to do work that I’m proud of (and I deeply want that for you, too!).Oh, and one last thing: I’d be remiss not to give a shout-out to Chronically Capable, a job matching service specifically geared toward folks with chronic illness and/or disabilities. (You can join it as a job seeker or an employer.) I sat in on one of their virtual job fairs where there were a variety of disabilities represented on the call, and I was super impressed with how accommodations were openly discussed — and not shamed or stigmatized — by the hiring company. I highly recommend you check them out!

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